Charted: The World’s Most Populous Countries (1973–2023)

Visual Capitalist October 11, 2022
Nick Routley

Humankind is now double the size it was in 1973.

Of course, that growth has been far from uniform, and the ranking of the world’s most populous countries continues to evolve.

Using the latest data available from the United Nations, we’ve looked at which countries have the largest share of the planet’s eight billion people.

The Top 10 Most Populous Countries

Here are the countries shown above, including how much they’ve grown over the past 50 years:

...

Country	Population (1973)	Population (2023)	Change (1973–2023)
🇨🇳 China	881,652,084	1,425,671,353	↑ 544,019,269
🇮🇳 India	596,107,487	1,428,627,666	↑ 832,520,179
🇺🇸 United States	207,314,772	339,996,567	↑ 132,681,795
🇷🇺 Russia	132,191,636	144,444,360

Today's Sponsors

2022-10-11T17:13:21-04:00